Jonah Goldberg Inspired This Post

I just read his piece, “Newtzilla to the Rescue” and enjoyed the satisfaction of reading that an NRO superstar had reached the same conclusion I had reached, in many respects, about Mr. Gingrich. See Just Two Speeches Away from the Presidency.

Goldberg’s story got my hackles up by reminding me about the vocal GOP establishment and the Establishment/Media cabal, the writers and politicians who are attacking Newt and failing to offer a better alternative. What they don’t see, and what the Tea Partiers see clearly, is that Newt is never going to be the Not Romney. He’s gaining ground because he’s the Not Obama.

The Tea Partiers, bloggers, and Top Conservatives On Twitter that I know, want to see Newt eviscerate Obama. And while they do not care whether or not he performs that act metaphorically, they are imagining one grand debate. Think about it. You’d have teacher against teacher, grasshopper. Ego against ego. Chamberlain versus Churchill, Ken Jennings toe-to-toe with Big Blue Statist. Andrea Tantaros wrestling Kimberly Guilfoyle.

Yeah, maybe that’s just me. But you get the idea.

It would be the moment we have all been waiting for. Newt wielding his vorpal blade, “Mr. President, I knew Hubert Shlafly, Hubert Shlafly was a friend of mine (wait for it). Mr. President, you’re no Hubert Shlafly.”

Tears would roll. Sobs of joy would be audible from entire suburban neighborhoods. There would be fist bumps and the other thing people do when they jump into each other and slam their beer guts together. It would awaken America like Whoville on Christmas Day.

It really does come down to this. Newt knew to run against Obama from the start. He has honed his weapons and we know what is coming just as surely as we knew the plot for Home Alone Two.

Personally, I’m hoping for something on this order:

“Mr. President, I’m fairly widely regarded as a person with ideas, but I can say without fear of equivocation, that never in my wildest imagination did I think I would say these words to a president of the United States. Mr. Obama, you are a Marxist and therefore an existential threat to our Nation and its way of life. You must be defeated or we will all be defeated. Our dreams will cease to exist like they did for the people of the Soviet Union, our future will freeze in time like it did for the people of Cuba. Our government will become even more bloated and fetid like most of Europe is today. Now, that is not a deduction on my part. That is the only conclusion the American people can reach when they examine your very words. You renounced the free enterprise system in December 2011 when you stated clearly and in context that “Capitalism is a failure.” You have complained incessantly that there is a disparity between economic classes in America that you believe the government should fix by taking from the wealthy and distributing it to the poor - precisely how Marx defined communism. Even Robin Hood knew better. He took from the government and gave to the poor. He let the rich be. You know, envy is so unbecoming as to be regarded as sinful in some quarters.

You have made friends of the worst of America - it’s haters like Bill Ayers the terrorist bomber. Like the Black Panthers who violently threatened voters that might have denied you your office. Like the drug cartels who you hoped would help you persude the Congress to ban guns - though the lesson we learned is that we have much more to fear from government than we do from Mexican Drug Lords. Or, like the sadly misinformed Occupy movement who claim to be a 99 percent minority incapable of working within a system designed specifically to deliver up all of its power to even just 51 percent.

“You have shut down industry and lamented the loss of jobs. You have forced American companies to keep their money offshore yet admonished citizens to buy American.

“You have squandered the blood of heroes so you could remove our military from a conflict that is not over - just so you could appease your voters.

“You have apologized for our greatness, you have bowed to lesser nations and you have humiliated us across the world with the zeal of a missionary.

“You have spent this Nation’s treasure like a profligate. You have indebted us to a greater degree than all of your predecessors, combined. And, you have failed to take responsibility for the damage you have caused. Instead, you have, on every occasion, blamed President Bush for leaving this Nation in arrears.

“The truth is, Mr. President, until Mr. Bush’s last year in office - and despite the worst enemy attack on US soil in our history, our country and our economy was strong and people were at work. It was a Democrat-controlled congress that spent the money - you know Mr. Bush didn’t write the bills he signed. But you, you have had your own Congress, your own Senate - now that the people have taken back their House from you. So, when you complain that work remains to be done, one must wonder how you fail to realize that you could have passed any bill you wanted. You had all the votes.

“Now, you must run on your lack of a record. You have not just wasted the great opportunity and the incredible honor you were given. You have soiled it.

“I am here to take it back.”

Why Mark Steyn is Wrong about Newt

Yesterday, Mark Steyn subbed for Rush Limbaugh.

Don't get me wrong, I think Steyn is a terrific radio host, a superb wit, a true Conservative and the kind of guy who I'd like to call a friend. In fact, as it turns out we do have mutual friends. Maybe some day I'll get to meet Mark. I'd like that.

But yesterday he ranted on an on about Newt Gingrich, asserting that the large majority of the ideas that have caused Newt to be credited as a great thinker are horribly flawed beyond redemption. To hear Steyn tell it, if we weren't being seduced by Gingrich's debate style we would see right through these awful, convoluted, contradictory, Escher-like visions for a Gingrich world.

Mark may be right on all counts - but he has missed the point entirely. It's all about Newt as a quintessential American.

A few years ago I engaged in a political discussion with some friends in Madrid. My Spanish isn't that good so it was difficult, but I knew what they were saying. They were trashing George W. Bush over the war on terror, which at that time had progressed to Shock and Awe and no further. The discussion turned to generalizations about the people of America and their character. How could we, for example, not revolt when there was such an opposition of clearly strong, well verbalized and very public dissension, shared to a great an extent by these Spaniards, who had just elected Zapatero and had not yet seen their friends carved up by shards of what used to be a commuter train.

I did not get into the weeds with them. I just asked them if they understood us, if they knew what was the essence of America. They did not, they didn't even know how to approach an answer. I explained, "America es una idea." That's it. That's why Steyn was wrong about Newt and why he thinks we're being lulled into embracing a dreamer of labyrinths.

The reality is that America, as an idea, is itself horribly flawed, very high maintenance, completely entropic, and overly complex to the highest degree possible without ceasing to exist - and yet it does. It continues to, I would submit, thrive. Yet, as Americans, we no more expect perfection from an idea than we expect sinlessness from Christians. It is only in the marketplace of ideas where American Conservatism values the effort even more than the outcome. We will invest our lives and our fortunes in a good idea and it has been that way from the beginning.

Because in the DNA of every American we have a reverence for ideas, we respect them, we cherish them, we spend our fortunes to nurture them. We name them; Mac, light bulb, TV, assembly line, Windows 7, movies, Blues, Rock 'n Roll, telephone, iPhone, MRI, One small step for man, cheeseburger, cowboy, oil well, Mach one, basketball, New York, LA, Peoria.

The earth is fertile here for the growth of ideas. So much so, even the seasons anticipate the harvest. We knew that each summer solstice brought with it a new iteration from the mind of Steve Jobs, for example. Yes, ideas grow very well, that's why some of our best traveled from somewhere else to be planted in our soil, traveling by Einstein, Tesla, Marconi, de Tocqueville among them. Okay, even Cowell.

Mark, when we look at president Obama, we see no ideas, we hear no plans, we gain no insights. He imbues within us no anticipation of an American Spring because he has no ideas. Ideas are so fundamental to American leadership that his lack of vision only gives life to the questions concerning his citizenship. What was the last great Kenyan idea?

But despite the fact that nothing has grown, we look forward to the fall harvest. We will pull out this weed, we will throw it on the compost heap, we will put it from our minds, we will briefly lament the lost season and then we will lovingly, respectfully, honor the idea that we are endowed by our Creator with the Right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, and then we will repeat the process until we get it right.

Irene. Big Deal.

The media are rushing to defend their over-coverage of the fizzled hurricane and, in the process, they’re forced to defend state, local and federal government actions. Already we’re hearing the dead being used as a defense. “Do you think the family’s of the six dead North Carolinians think the warnings were overdone?” was one defense this morning on Fox.

Of course, these comments are beside the point.

The point is that the government got several things wrong in a way that’s symptomatic of government’s major shortcomings. First, government is ham-handed. It is packed with people who think they know better than you how to run your life, and they do so without your consent. Mayor Bloomberg is a great example. If he’s not complaining about your diet, he’s demanding you leave your home because a storm is approaching. His excuse, in the case of the storm, is that you will put a burden on emergency services if you get into trouble. Problem is, while Bloomberg is not in charge of you, he is in charge of emergency services and all he needs to say is, “Fine, stay home. But when the storm’s blowing and you’re crying for help, we won’t be able to reach you so you’re on your own.” Fair enough. But don’t tell me I have to leave my house. You are not welcome to make any rules about my house. Period.

And NOAA. They got it very wrong. Today, they’re saying it’s better to over-predict than to under-predict and, by the way, they got the track exactly right. Well, let’s just predict rain for every day opf the week. If we’re right, nobody cares. If we’re wrong, everyone’s delighted with the sunshine. What a bogus argument!

It’s your job to get it right. You missed the dry air mass that interdicted the storm. You missed the extremely low pressure. You missed a lot of details.

The problem is, a government agency carries a certain elevated import or credibility that government agencies are not entitled to. They have never earned their credibility and every time they’re put to the test, they screw up. The government screws up about everything it touches.

Obama’s “Nice job, Brownie,” moment with Napolitano and Fugate was a Little League trophy ceremony. Congratulations on handling the storm of the century, er year, er week, so well. Okay, well here’s a thought. Do you think the families of the six dead in North Carolina think you did such a good job?

How I’d Explain the Debt Ceiling Crisis

If I were John Boehner, Speaker of the House:

“As you know, the Republican Leadership has been trying desperately since we were elected to the majority in the House of Representatives, to bring sound financial policy to our government.

But now, the President, the pilot of this great big corporate jet that we’re all riding in as a nation, has come back from his lofty perch in the nose of the plane to inform us that we’re running out of fuel, and we’re going down. Instead of telling us he’s going to throttle back, save the fuel we have left, and look for some soft turf for an emergency landing - he wants to know what WE’RE going to do about it. Turns out, he didn’t file a flight plan. He didn’t calculate how much fuel we’d need for our trip. And, he dumped a most of our fuel while we were in flight. Makes us wonder what he was thinking. Naturally, we make our recommendations - come down to earth, throttle back, measure your resources.

But instead, he demands to fill our fuel tanks with blood from the biggest and strongest of the passengers, the very one’s who’ll help us evacuate if we come down hard. Even if it would work, there’s not enough blood in all of them to make much difference. It would just make it worse for all of us. Clearly, it’s in our own best interests to resist that idea.

Since we have only a majority in the House it’s easy to accuse us of just blocking progress. But the polls show that most of you understand that what we’re blocking is just more of the same “tax and spend” that got us into this mess in the first place. On the other hand, what we’re trying to provide is leadership that you are not seeing from the President and the Democrat-controlled Senate. I deeply regret having to say those words because we Americans have a strong tradition of looking to the holder of the nation’s highest office with a respect that ordinarily would cause one to forebear such direct criticism. We have reached a point with his conduct, however, where such silence concerning it becomes tantamount to a lie.

For example, unlike the presidents before him, this President has failed to produce a budget for the operation of his government. The failure to lead this country financially is dangerous and irresponsible, and the condition we find ourselves in today is all the proof you need. Our national security is impacted by our financial stability.

But to threaten to not pay our military, or to criticise us when we try to step in and attempt fill the leadership vacuum makes us suspicious of the president’s abilities and intentions. We ask, “If he could lead, wouldn’t we be seeing it?” If he could do something good for the nation, wouldn’t he?

Here are four facts that are not in dispute:

-In just two years, this President has driven our nation deeper into debt than all the presidents before him combined.

-This President has failed to produce a budget for the operation of government.

-This President has given away the nations wealth on the promise of rapid reductions in unemployment.

-The President has failed to put before the American people any concrete plan, meaning even a single sentence in written form, as a proposal for solving the debt crisis.

This financial crisis is of his making. These four facts cast doubt on his ability and sincerity and may explain why he has been unable to make anything positive happen.

Of course, I fully expect a shallow response to what I’ve just said. There will be those standing in the midst of the disaster crying, “how dare we speak ill of the President.” We’ll be upbraided by the President’s minions and the media sycophants for blaming him instead of addressing the problem. You’ll pardon us if we ignore that, if we refuse to engage in those diversions and instead insist that you pundits get serious and do your jobs.

You see, the facts are not in dispute. It IS the President’s problem. Now, we must try to solve it without his help and with our best ideas and intentions. We can’t all be the pilot, so we’ll have to do it somehow from the back of the plane, with the people’s help.”

The Hidden Problem with The Budget Deal

I used to produce TV advertising for a car dealer and as I write this I'm reminded of the saying, "It isn't the deal you got - it's the deal you think you got." In other words, even if you paid way too much, if you think you got a good deal, that's all that matters. I work with a guy who once visited a dealer and told him, "I only have $18,000 to spend, so I want your best deal." Guess how much his van cost.

But, I'm not going to pass judgment here on the deal Speaker Boehner thinks he got. Because we are still spending more than we collect, I do question the level of accomplishment. What really bothers me is quite different than the substance of the deal.

What really bothers me is the GOP's inability to communicate the many persuasive arguments they had in their pockets - that I believe would have allowed them to achieve much more than they did - by getting the preponderance of public opinion on their side. They have to learn how to fight and argue in ways that capture the public's imagination.

For example, their sole argument was framed around the two words, "cutting spending." That same rhetoric was employed the last time the two parties squared off over keeping the government open. By changing the meme, the GOP could have made it much more difficult for the Democrats to say, "There you go again." For example, if the GOP had said they are "cutting the cost of government," it would have more squarely represented what was actually happening, and it would have reinforced the reasonableness of the Tea Party's demands to cut the size and cost of government. We know the Democrats cannot successfully argue against cutting the cost of government. Everybody wants that.

Further, cutting the cost of government does not imply cutting services. For example, when you shop, if you ask for a discount it doesn't mean you get less of an item - it simply means you pay less for an item.

The GOP never brought the argument out of the stratosphere and down to the level where most people could undertand it. For example, why did they never take the two-percent Boehner was asking for and related it to a single dollar? Instead they were always relating it to several trillion dollars. How reasonable and easy it is to understand when you hear, "Speaker Boehner wants to cut the budget by 2 cents on the dollar." Immediately opposition seems unreasonable. Heck, he could have started at a nickel using that kind of rhetoric.

When the Democrats complained about cutting funding for Planned Parenthood and NPR, the GOP should have responded, "But they're not government agencies." You Democrats who are always talking about the sin of giving tax breaks to special interests have to be willing to do what you ask of others. Show us by your example. Let's see you have the guts to cut spending for your own special interests.

And when Harry Reid said the GOP didn't care about women, why didn't the GOP remind Mr. Reid that his Nevada is where politicians look the other way when women prostitute themselves. Is that how Mr. Reid shows his respect for women? Let's see a show of hands of all the Democrats who believe that prostitution in Nevada demonstrates a proper respect for women - if you do, you should be voting for Planned Parenthood - it'll help keep Harry Reid's prostitutes in business.

Why didn't Speaker Boehner simply say, "Look. Most people in this country are opposed to abortion. Most people in this country don't think the government should pay for it and most people think it's bad enough that it exists. Planned Parenthood is simply going to have to find another way to pay for abortions. That's what the people want and, while I cannot speak for the Democrat party, the Republicans are determined, to the best of our ability, to represent the people. As far as other health-related issues are concerned, there are plenty of places for people to go and we have many entitlement programs in place already for providing health care to the indigent. If those aren't working, then perhaps Mr. Reid should not have advocated so vehemently recently for more government care - but less.

See. There are lots of great arguments that could have been made to appeal to the public. They should be being made right now. Today. Because the fight has just begun.

*crickets*

Israel Security Is real. TSA is not.

Fifteen Hours ago I went through security at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. As I entered the airport, I was interviewed by a 20-something female who spoke perfect English, Hebrew and, no doubt a couple other languages. First she carefully checked my facial features - glancing back and forth three time - while holding my passport photo at the same elevation as my face. She asked me, by name, how I was doing, and she watched my face as I answered. I suppose if I didn’t react with familiarity to my own name I was to be quickly yanked from the line. I passed the test. 

She asked me questions about who I was traveling with, where I’d been, and if I had been responsible for my suitcase the entire time. Once satisfied, she motioned me over to an x-ray machine with a conveyor belt. A 20-something young man took my bag and labeled it, he scanned the bar code on the label and sent me to another line.

At that checkpoint, I took my suitcase to a countertop that had a permanent lectern of frosted glass elevated on stainless tubing. The lectern held touch screen displays left and right like an open book. As I approached my bag tag was scanned and the image produced by the x-ray machine was displayed after a couple finger-taps on the screen. Another 20-something female asked me to open my suitcase and I complied. She checked the screen and oriented the suitcase to the image. The dialog went something like this-

Her: (She picks a package out from between some clothes I had packed around it) What’s in here?
Me: A bowl.
Her: Where did you get it?
Me: I bought it in the Galilee, in Tabgha.
Her: Did you pack your suitcase yourself?
Me: Yes.
Her: Did anyone give you anything as a gift?
Me: No.
Her: Did you have your suitcase in your control the whole time you were in Israel?
Me: Yes.
Her: What is in these paper bags?
Me: Those are olive wood carvings.
Her: Where did you get them?
Me: Bethlehem.
Her: Did you buy other things?
Me: Yes.
Her: What did you buy?
Me: More of the same. Small items, mostly - souvenirs.

Her: Okay, you can close your bag.



What else do they do at Ben Gurion? They profile. Another group of caucasian Americans who had an Asian-American leader saw him pulled aside and interviewed for a half hour. A woman who left Israel a few days before her husband was interviewed alone, in a private room, by two men - one of whom was armed with an automatic weapon. She was repeatedly asked where he was, who he was with, what Arabs he knew, who his friends were in Israel and then she was asked the same questions over and over.

They use spies. There are people who walk around as though travelers, sitting at gates, watching faces and listening to conversations, who never leave the airport. I have seen them myself at JFK. After several hours I realized that some of the people I had noted who were meandering though the crowds waiting for flights to Israel were disappearing into a secure room where for just a moment, I saw several workers looking through suitcases. It was in a room with one-way glass and a combination of lighting and reflection allowed me to see for just a couple seconds. But it was clear as a bell what was going on.

But, there’s no pat down. There’s no radiation. No shoes come off, no computers come out of their cases, jackets are sent through the x-ray, but no belts come off. There’s a walk-through metal detector. And there are more questions at passport control.

It’s intelligent, respectful, and it works.

On the other hand, I was required to change terminals at JFK and just 12 hours after going through Israeli security, I went through TSA security. It might as well have been another planet, the differences were so extreme.

TSA eyes were not scanning me, my face, my demeanor. They were concentrating on what they’ve been trained to look at - paperwork, screens and images - processes. Am I putting things in trays that should go through the conveyor trayless? Yeah, that’ll help spot a terrorist. One of my traveling companions - a grandfatherly white man - was patted down. Ridiculous. All incidents have been caused by dark skinned, young Muslim men - none by 60-year old white German-American grandfathers. What you see in our airports is not security - it’s politics.

I had a plastic bag with two pounds of Dead Sea mud in an Army green Alice Pack that I carried on my back. The Israeli’s didn’t care - but the Americans missed it. It’s a liquid, a colloid, a prohibited soupy, viscous chemical mix, and they never even saw it. I know why, and if I wanted to transport an explosive, I know how it could be done now. Essentially, it slipped through because there’s no passion in the US for finding and outsmarting the terrorists - TSA just follows orders and uses no intuitive processes - because the TSA doesn’t really believe there are people who want to kill us.

That’s why we’ve had several terrorist incidents on our airplanes in just the past few years and why TSA has never caught a terrorist. The Israeli record is spotless.

Ding Dong the Bitch is Dead

Democrats and the mainstream media are whistling past the graveyard. They’re talking about Obamacare like it’s a tennis match. Durbin just yesterday, and others, are referencing the won/lost court case standings. Yes, two Federal Judges have ruled that the Affordable Care Act (gag) is legit - and two have ruled against the government.

But that’s not the way these things work. This is a lot more like hunting than tennis.

Two Judges decided not to shoot at the Healthcare Law. They left it alone. That has no impact on the law. It doesn’t make it stronger, and it doesn’t detract from it. It has no effect.

However, another judge did take a shot at the bill and wounded it (the Virginia case). That had an effect and the government is forced to appeal that case.

Judge Vinson, the Federal Judge hearing the case brought by Florida and joined by 25 other states, ruled the Act unconstitutional. He further said that he would not enjoin the government from enforcing the Act because he had rendered it null and void. In other rather uncivil words, he shot it in the heart at close range and killed it. It does not exist anymore. It is not a law, it has no force and it is as though it never passed.

The government hopes to win an appeal and win at the Supreme Court, but that is unlikely.

What must happen now is for pressure to be brought to bear on the Administration to agree to take the case immediately to the Supreme Court. The Court could hear and render a verdict on the case in less than two months, saving the country a lot of pain and money in litigation.

Here are two ways to pressure the Administration: First, the victorious states must announce that they accept the verdict and will not implement any of the mandates provided for in the former law. In other words, they show they understand how to win. Then, the House should refuse to consider any legislation until the Administration agrees to fast-track the case to the Supreme Court. I believe the House could appeal to the Court to do so because they should have standing in the matter - they created the bill.

Meanwhile, it would be better for McCain and Graham and Hatch to just keep quiet. Hatch’s plan to repeal the individual mandate would leave the question of Congress’ Commerce Clause power undecided by the Supreme Court. We need the Court to address and roll back that authority. And stripping an act which no longer exists of its authority is simply silly, a futile exercise. You guys don’t have any idea how winners act, do you. Buh-Bye.